We can draw a clear line between collaboration and a great online customer experience. When marketing, digital and IT teams work seamlessly there’s a much greater chance of successfully providing stand-out digital experiences that are better, faster and more personalised.
Nor is this a nice-to-have; it’s crucial to business success. Four in five consumers responding to a Salesforce survey revealed the experience that a company provides for them is just as important as the quality of its products and services.
Silos are squeezing the digital experiences
Most digital transformation leaders are not blind to the fact that a siloed structure hurts online customer experience. Despite this, half of all organisations still deem such internal disconnects to be their biggest barrier to better CX.
In part, this problem can be blamed on the widely held belief that CX needs two different approaches to work properly: one for marketing and one for IT. In other words, the perception that creativity and technology are such different beasts that they must be kept apart to do their best work. Digital departments - if separate - can often find themselves squeezed between these teams.
Yet this does little to boost digital experiences for customers. Marketing and/or digital can devise as many audience-pleasing campaigns as they like, but without the right insight and support from IT to deliver them to the right customers at the right time, those efforts will be wasted.
The same is true in reverse. If IT holds the key to customer data, but marketing and digital departments don’t have access to that information in the most useful formats on tap, the online customer experience will fall flat. This is another aspect managers recognise: according to Econsultancy/Google, 86% of senior executives agree that eliminating organsational silos is critical to using data and analytics in decision-making.
So, how can businesses be better at ensuring silos are torn down and customers enjoy the best possible digital experiences?
How to show up as your customers expect you to
The solution to that conundrum is to coalesce around a shared vision. Very often that might be as seemingly straightforward as delivering better digital experiences. To make that happen, you’ll need a clear focus on its three constituent parts: people, process and perspective. All of those are key to transformational change that create an online customer experience which can be up there with the best.
People
Hire collaborative thinkers and doers. Individuals who are full of ideas and energy, but also keen to work together with others in their department. Modern business is run on highly iterative plans - quarterly strategies and budgets are now commonplace - so you need people who can think in a joined-up manner, recognising different perspectives and understanding how shared goals can be identified and reached.
You can’t just have thinkers, though. You need doers to roll up their sleeves and get stuff done. When these two distinct skill-sets are put to work in tandem there’s less of a risk that theory will never happen practically.
Process
Delivery of business transformation, and the customer digital experiences that are its end product, usually follows a roadmap. To make such a dynamic approach work the entire internal team responsible for online customer experience must embrace a product mindset. Develop a culture of compartmentalising and understanding each challenge and solution along the way, and collective perspectives will ensure you can overcome roadblocks.
Immersing teams in such a product-focussed way may mean more work up front, but the long-term benefits are tangible. You’ll find that progress gathers pace, so that transformation happens faster and with more flexibility. Yet it won’t snowball out of control.
Perspective
I’ve already touched on team members sharing perspectives on challenges, solutions and even the role of others in the wider delivery of digital experiences. A unified standpoint keeps everyone focussed on that end goal. But the one perspective no project can do without is the view from the boardroom.
The very best digital work is driven from the top. From loftier vantage points, it’s easier to spot the organisational wrinkles between marketing, digital and IT teams that will cause tension. The C-suite should be involved to identify and solve business problems - recognising that all those in charge of digital experiences have a part to play and must always pull in the same direction.
Ensure all of these elements are in place, and your customers may just start to see your brand, and their online experience, in a whole new light.
To find out how MMT can help deliver excellent digital experiences for your brand, contact us and book your discovery call with us today.
